Have Better Conversations #10

September 29, 2017

OMG I’ve actually blogged three times this week somebody get me a certificate this never happens! Basically I’ve been busy doing stuff that takes time and sucks all the excess creativity out of me, so I’ve been watching Netflix instead of blogging in my down time. I can’t even decide what I want to watch on Netflix, I’m so knackered so it’s been Mark’s choice of every foodie / chef documentary ever.

That’s my life. But I have had the time for a few interesting conversations so here are five links that may lead to conversational magic for you too.

If not, you’re just gonna have to have an interesting weekend and talk about that instead.

1. Sunday is the first day of Inktober. I’ve asked Mark to do this with me. What will probably happen is that he will do it really well for the full month and I will give up in frustration after two days of lacklustre ideas. But I really, really, really want to draw again. Wish me luck.

2. I listened to this podcast from the BBC World Service about What Can We Do With Our Dead? The Greek situation in particular is awful and grisly. If you can’t listen to a podcast and would prefer to read about it, here’s an older story on the subject.

3. Onto less morbid subjects, do you have a Gmail account? These days it seems like everyone wants your email, but I’m always apprehensive of what they’re going to do with it and what lists it will end up on. With Gmail you can add a plus sign and whatever tag you want to your email and still receive all of your mail to your usual inbox. That way you can track where those weird spam emails came from.

Say your email is mycoolemailaddress@gmail.com and you want to sign up for an Amazon account. You can sign up with mycoolemailaddress+Amazon@gmail.com. Any email that Amazon send you will get through to you. However, if you start getting spam email to mycoolemailaddress+Amazon@gmail.com you know they acquired that address via Amazon. Just using Amazon as a hypothetical example here, obviously.

If you really don’t want someone to have your email but you need to confirm something via email link before they’ll let you use a service then you can use 10 minute mail. It’s an email that self destructs after ten minutes and you can see any new messages in that time. It’s also free.

4. More cool email news: my favourite email newsletter right now is the She Loves London newsletter. It’s funny, it’s poignant, it happens on a Friday during the sober hours. It’s very different from every other blogger’s newsletter. Just sign up now. (Use your gmail and add a +tag and see if Joanna sells your email to the spambots if you want, but I’m 97% confident that she won’t).

5. And finally, a video. This isn’t actually a conversation starter, in fact it stopped my being involved in many conversations, but I’m going to allow that twist because I am mad with power around these parts of the internet. Remember when Taylor Swift released that new video? The Look What You Made Me Do one? No, I’m no linking that. But everyone was talking about it on the net. Eventually I got sick of not understanding what people were on about, so I went to YouTube specifically to watch it and to stop feeling like a little old lady. Except I got waylaid by this video by the wonderful EmmaInks:

Basically I watched all of this video and completely forgot about Taylor. It was ages later before I went back on Twitter and realised that I still didn’t understand any of the jokes and had to go back to watch her video. Sorry Taylor. But Emma Inks had a cat in hers, you know? (No that’s not the surprise in the title, but I can confirm the surprise and the cat are equally cute).